Originally Posted by
factor828 Thank you for answering!
Of course I am aware of and use ad and script blockers on my PCs but I think that they would not help much if my DNS was poisoned and I landed on a spoofed page in the first place, hence my question. I have read that routers can have their DNS settings altered by malicious software and wanted to know if the same was possible with a phone acting as a router when tethering but from your answer I guess the chances of this happening silently are slim, right?
While it's not likely to happen, I could see how malware could change router settings. All home and office grade routers are configured from a web page. If you were logged on to the router for any reason, malware could hijack that session, and inject changes into the router.
Your phone's browser is in a sandbox that isolates it from other processes running on the phone. Malware would have to break through that sandbox to actually get into the settings of the phone.